Home > Blogs > VMware Workstation Zealot

VMware Workstation 10 plans to Release the Retro Computer Support Pack

Posted on April 1, 2014 by William Myrhang

What’s Cool about the VMware KVM Utility.

Posted on March 18, 2014 by William Myrhang

VMware Workstation 10 comes with a handy utility which allows you to switch between active VMs (virtual machines) using a configurable hot key just like a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch. The benefit of using the VMware KVM utility is the VMs can be run in full-screen without launching the Workstation 10 interface (no tool bar) and manage their power state via CLI (command line interface). Another additional benefit from an IT perspective is running a virtual machine for the user when Windows is launched and the user can seamlessly switch between the operating systems by using the defined hotkey.

Note: The VMware KVM mode is only available for Windows version of Workstation 10.x.

Below is a brief example with screen shots and short video on how I setup and used VMware KVM mode with desktop shortcuts on my Win 8.1 computer. *** Not all steps are included in this blog post and the location of your files might be different so please reference Knowledge Base article KB2057914 and VMware KVM Guide (pdf) for detailed information on using the VMware KVM utility.

The first step in configuring VMware KVM mode is setting the hotkeys and preferences. Open up a command prompt and change to the directory where Workstation is installed. Launch the VMware KVM executable with the “–preferences” after the command.

Upon launching “vmware-kvm.exe –preferences” command you will see a small GUI window that allows you to change the default hot keys in addition to other features for launching and exiting the virtual machine.

If you use multiple monitors like I am you can change the physical monitor on which the selected virtual machine runs in full screen mode as shown below. Click OK to exit the utility and save you KVM preferences.

The second step is to execute the vmware-kvm.exe command with a pointer to the selected VM to run Workstation in KVM mode. You will run the command: “vmware-kvm.exe [OPTIONS] virtual-machine-vmx-file.vmx” where: “virtual-machine-vmx-file.vmx” is the path to the .vmx file of the virtual machine. To run multiple VMs and switch between them with the configured hot key the vmware-kvm.exe command must be issued once for each VM you want to start or stop in KVM mode.

In the next few screen shots I created a desktop shortcut for the vmware-kvm.exe and pointed it to the location of my VM I want assigned to the desktop shortcut. The location of you vmware-kvm.exe and VMs may be different depending if you changed the default installation locations when installing VMware Workstation 10. For additional assistance in locating your VMs please reference KB Article KB1003880 besides the guides mentioned above.

Create a desktop shortcut for the vmware-kvm.exe executable from within File Explorer by right clicking on the executable and selecting “Send To” “Desktop (create shortcut)”

Once the shortcut is created on the desktop edit the shortcut properties and in the “Target Field” enter the path to the “.vmx” file of the selected VM. Make sure the path to the VM is after the quotes and is also inside its own quotes. Click Apply and OK to exit the desktop shortcut properties. The path to my selected VM as an example would be “O:\VMs\Windows 7 SP1 x64\Windows 7 SP1 x64.vmx” and would come after the path to the vmware-kvm.exe file location as shown below.

Click on the newly created desktop shortcut to launch the VM in Full Screen. To cycle through the running VMs and current host OS desktop screen use the configured hotkey which in my case is the “Pause” key. To run more VMs in KVM mode create additional shortcuts for the vmware-kvm.exe executable and point to the VM you would like to run.

In the short video below (no audio) I created three vmware-kvm.exe shortcuts on my Win 8.1 desktop for various Windows OS VMs (Win XP, Win Vista, Win 7) and launch each one and cycle through the VMs with the Pause hot-key and then back to my WIn 8.1 desktop.

Spring is in the Air

Posted on March 17, 2014 by William Myrhang

We are celebrating Spring this week in the Northern Hemisphere and Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere (Australia, New Zealand, South America, Southern Africa) with a cool 15% discount on VMware Workstation 10. This sale will not last long so act quickly for changing of the season savings.

VMware Workstation:

Buy Workstation 10 and get 15% off
Upgrade to Workstation 10 from Workstation 8 or 9 and get 15% off

This offer starts on Monday, March 17th at 8 PM Pacific Time and ends on March 20th at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.

Experience Android KitKat in VMware Workstation

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Bo Fu

KitKat is the latest Android release from Google with a lot of attractive changes both inside and outside. Before it hits every Android phone out there, you certainly have a new way to experience it with a very simple set up in VMware Workstation 10.

Last week, our team was very excited to see that the latest Android x86 release (a.k.a. 4.4 RC1) supports VMware virtual machines. Details are available in the release note at http://www.android-x86.org/releases/releasenote-4-4-rc1.

I downloaded the ISO file and successfully set it up to run within Workstation 10 but you need to be aware of a couple tips and tricks. The part that you need to notice during installation is that once the Android ISO file is selected, it will be detected as FreeBSD and 256 MB of memory is assigned by default which was not enough to power on the VM without errors. After a few trials of modifying the memory settings of the VM, I found out that 4 GB of virtual memory could sufficiently make it run in a very smooth style.

Upon successful VM power up you will need to walk through a manual installation of Linux which is not covered in this article. However if during the installation you run into any problem when creating and formatting the disk, here is a brief reference you can use as a guide, https://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2010/05/google-android-running-on-your-workstation.html. One thing to note is VMware Tools are not supported for Android.

Here is screenshot during successful power up of the KitKat VM before it boots into the GUI.

Once the Android VM was setup and I powered on the VM, KitKat worked very well as you can see from the screenshot below. You can surf the web and use most of the Android application, mouse curser/clicks mimic the touch screen input, and I also tried to run it on Microsoft Surface tablet, where you can really leverage the touch screen to operate the Android VM. While most of applications I tried worked well, Google Maps App could not be rendered properly at the moment.

Here is a screenshot of the Main Android Home Screen.

Below is another screenshot of KitKat browsing VMware website.

Another minor issue I discovered is that once the KitKat VM falls into sleep mode, I could not wake it up when there is no physical power button, so I had to reboot it. A simple workaround is going to the KitKat Settings -> Display -> Sleep, and check “Never time out of inactivity”.

Please let us know feedback running Android x86 VM in VMware Workstation since we’d love to make this a great way to experience Android OS.

We’re adding to the team!

Posted on January 24, 2014 by William Myrhang

The New Year starts out with some great additions to the VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion teams. As a result of continued growth and ongoing product development, VMware has decided to add more product marketing and product management expertise to the Fusion and Workstation teams.

Bo Fu, Nannette Vilushis, and me, William Myrhang, wanted to take the opportunity to introduce ourselves, revitalize the Workstation and Fusion blogs, and engage with our Workstation and Fusion users. We bring many years of product management and marketing experience to the team along with passion for helping IT to use virtualization software to be more successful.

We’re very excited to be working on products with great track records. VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion are exceptionally cool, proven, and reliable products that continue to win industry awards. Newbie product VMware Player Plus has surpassed all expectations in its first release as the best way to deliver a managed desktop. This success is largely due to our loyal user communities, who amaze us with their enthusiasm, ingenuity, and dedication to excellence. We want to celebrate our communities with frequent posts to the Workstation and Fusion blogs on product news, usage tips, links to other “creative” works, and occasionally share a little bit of information on what we are thinking or new features that we are considering….

In addition to our blogs, we are becoming active in VMware’s social communities (Community, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn). If you have product suggestions, want to brag about something awesome that you have done with our products, or show off your encyclopedic knowledge of everything virtual… we look forward to hearing from you in the communities!

- William Myrhang, Nannette Vilushis, and Bo Fu

Using VMware Workstation to Manage your ESXI hosts and VMs

Posted on December 13, 2013 by William Myrhang

Often the VMware Workstation group gets questions about how to leverage VMware Workstation to remotely connect to virtual machines running on another instance of Workstation, or on VMware vSphere. William Lam, a VMware Staff Product Integration Architect, recently wrote an informative article on his excellent Virtually Ghetto Blog regarding using VMware Workstation 10 to manage ESXi hosts and remote VMs. William’s Virtually Ghetto blog focuses heavily on VMware automation tips and tricks and has been voted one of the top 10 Virtualization blogs on vsphere-land.com in 2013. Thanks to William Lam for allowing us to feature his complete blog post below.

How cool is that!? Using VMware Workstation to manage your ESXi hosts (including Free ESXi) & VMs

Written and Posted by William Lam Thursday, November 21, 2013

To be completely honest, I have not played with VMware Workstation in quite awhile as my day-to-day job primarily revolves around our Enterprise suite of products. In a recent meeting that I was in, I picked up on some interesting tidbits about the latest version of VMware Workstation 10 and after giving it a try in my lab, I thought I would share one very cool feature that you may be aware of (there is actually a lot of cool features in latest release, check what’s new here).

The very first thing I noticed is that unlike other downloads from VMware in which you need to register the product and get an evaluation key. VMware Workstation can be downloaded without any registration and you can start the 30-day free trial immediately after installation! I think that is a really slick and can also come in handy if you need to install Workstation right away for something. Make sure you download from this page here by clicking on “Try for Free” instead of going to www.vmware.com/downloads

One of the capabilities that Workstation introduced probably a couple of releases ago was the ability to connect to a remote system whether that is another Workstation instance, vCenter Server and even an ESXi host. At the time I assumed this was to enable users to easily cold migrate a Virtual Machine that was created locally onto one of these remote targets.

What I did not realize was that you could do a lot more with this capability than to just copy offline Virtual Machines. To my surprise I found that you could fully manage the Virtual Machines on these remote targets including changing the virtual hardware configurations such as adding memory, cpu, disk, etc. guestOS as well as provision new Virtual Machines. The VM Console is fully functional leveraging VMRC and you can even connect to Free ESXi instances and get same capabilities you had with the legacy vSphere C# Client. The other neat thing about this is you can also manage your Virtual Hardware 10 VMs even though the latest vSphere C# Client does not allow this because VMware Workstation 10 is vHW10 aware.

Here is a screenshot of managing my Free ESXi host which is running on my Apple Mac Mini as well as my vCenter Server. As you can see you can have multiple connections open up which is quite useful, especially if you have a couple of Free ESXi hosts in which you would like a single pane of glass to manage.

Another nice feature is the amount of backwards capability it provides for vSphere. You can go as far back as vSphere 4.1 (vCenter Server & ESXi). To prove this in my environment, I provisioned a Nested ESXi running on vSphere 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 and connected them all to Workstation. This is another great way to manage standalone ESXi hosts if you still need to run older versions.

Lastly, you do not need to be running the Windows version of VMware Workstation to get these benefits. You can also do the same using Workstation for Linux and here is a screenshot of running Workstation on an Ubuntu desktop.

As you can see this is just one of many new and cool capabilities of VMware Workstation 10 and I have to say for $250, this is a steal to be able to easily manage not only your VMs running locally but also remote systems like vCenter Server, ESXi hosts including Free ESXi which is a huge deal IMHO. The Workstation team really knocked it out of the park and I am glad I had the opportunity to check out their latest release. I also hope VMware Fusion will be getting these capabilities in the near future! Simon, I hope you see this

VMware Workstation Updates Now Available

Posted on December 5, 2013 by William Myrhang

VMware Workstation 10.0.1 is now available

VMware Workstation 10.0.1 is a maintenance release that is a free update for all VMware Workstation 10.x customers. Read the Release Notes for more details.

VMware Workstation 9.0.3 is now available

VMware Workstation 9.0.3 is a maintenance release that is a free update for all VMware Workstation 9.x customers. Read the Release Notes for more details.

How to get the updates

VMware Workstation will prompt you to download the update the next time you run it. You can manually check for the update from the “Help” -> “Software Updates” menu item. Alternatively, you can download it from here.

Thanks to the Workstation customers reporting these issues to Workstation Support and discussing them with the VMware Workstation Community.

VMware Black Friday/Cyber Monday – Our Biggest Sale of the Year

Posted on November 28, 2013 by William Myrhang

Celebrate Cyber Monday with the Best Discounts of the Year on VMware Workstation 10.

Now is your chance to buy the product that InfoWorld called “The Best Desktop Virtualization Software for Techs”. Save 35% on the all new VMware Workstation 10. Act now, there has never been a better time to buy Workstation 10.

Buy or upgrade now and save 35% through December 4, 2013:

Do you have a PC and a Mac?

Get 40% off when you buy both VMware Workstation 10 and VMware Fusion 6 Professional.

Buy VMware Workstation 10 and VMware Fusion 6 Professional Combo Package

- The VMware Workstation Team

New Release of VMware Workstation 10 – Now Available!

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Nicolas Rochard

We couldn’t be more excited to release the next major version of VMware Workstation!

Workstation 10 showcases robust new features with unmatched operating system support, a rich user experience, a comprehensive feature set and high performance.

VMware Workstation 10 is designed for professionals that rely on virtual machines to get their job done. We know IT professionals count on VMware Workstation for innovation and reliability and VMware Workstation 10 continues that tradition with features that help you work faster and make your job easier without compromising the quality that you expect from VMware.

Key new features in VMware Workstation 10 include:

The Latest Operating Systems – Easy Install now recognizes Windows 8.1 and new Linux distributions to make it easier than ever to create current virtual machines. Computers running Windows 8.1 can be converted into virtual machines via an easy-to-use wizard.

State of the Art Performance – Workstation 10 enables you to create faster, more powerful virtual machines with up to 16 vCPUs, 64GB of memory, 8 TB disks and faster USB connections, a new vSATA controller and twice as many virtual networks.

Expiring Virtual Machines – Restricted virtual machines can be set to expire at a specified date and time. An expired virtual machine automatically suspends and will not restart without administrator intervention.

Tablet Sensors – VMware Workstation 10 includes the first-ever virtual accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and ambient light sensor to enable applications running in a virtual machine to respond when a user juggles their tablet.

Run a Cloud on Your PC – Workstation 10 lets you build a cloud on your PC running popular applications from Pivotal, Puppet Labs and Vagrant.

We hope you enjoy using VMware Workstation 10 as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The VMware Workstation Team

What if I just bought VMware Workstation 9?

If you purchased VMware Workstation 9 (Full license or upgrade) between August 1st and September 30th of 2013, you are eligible for a complimentary electronic upgrade under the VMware Workstation 10 Technology Guarantee Program (TGP). To learn how to get your complimentary upgrade click here.

If you cannot wait for your complimentary upgrade to VMware Workstation 10, we suggest you make the most of our free 30-day trial offer.

Availability and pricing

VMware Workstation 10 is immediately available for purchase from the VMware online store for $249 (US) and upgrades from VMware Workstation 8.x and 9.x are available for $119 (US). VMware Workstation can also be purchased through VMware’s network of resellers and distributors.

Buy Workstation 10 or Upgrade to Workstation 10

Customers with an active support and subscription (“SnS”) contract are eligible to upgrade to Workstation 9 for free in the My VMware portal.

If you would like to discuss Workstation 10 in more detail, please join us in the VMware Workstation community.

To learn more, try, buy, or upgrade, click here (https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/)

Mar	APR	May
	04
2013	2014	2015

Official blog of VMware Workstation